cover image Hot Shots

Hot Shots

Laurence Gough. Viking Books, $16.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-670-83014-5

This is Gough's third novel featuring the tough duo of police detectives Jack Willows and Claire Parker, who work out of Vancouver, Canada. The interaction, cooperation and unspoken understanding essential to a successful police partnership is one of the most fascinating aspects of Gough's writing as he sends his sleuths into an investigation of a brutal drug-related murder. In tight, hard-hitting prose, Gough delineates a plot in which a monstrously cruel drug king, Gary Silk, orders his underlings to kill one another off after a multimillion-dollar drug deal has gone awry. Meanwhile, a comparatively ordinary citizen crosses Silk's path when he discovers the missing shipment washed up on a beach and decides that it may save him from financial ruin if he can discover how to market it. This is a hard-boiled story loaded with graphic violence, but the suspense will have even the queasy reader turning the pages. A slam-bang ending tidies up the plot with plenty of gunfire and a murder avenged. (June)